Escape Artists
PodCastle => Episode Comments => Topic started by: DKT on November 17, 2010, 04:50:55 PM
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PodCastle 131: Skatouioannis (http://podcastle.org/2010/11/16/podcastle-131-skatouioannis/)
by Nick Mamatas (http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/)
Read by David O. Englestad
Originally published in Lenox Avenue
The first time Skatouioannis made an appearance was the morning of the SATs. I had just started the ignition and was pulling out of the driveway when the ground gave way. It felt like I had hit a speed bump, or a kid, then it all went black. The edge of a shovel and a drizzle of broken glass woke me up – he was there, a silhouette with the sun behind his head, branches and telephone wires criss-crossing the sky, poking away at the windshield of my car, which was standing nearly straight up, the trunk and back seat in the sinkhole left by the collapsed septic tank. A mostly empty septic tank. The shovel came down hard.
I woke up in the hospital three days later, my first year’s tuition already spent on a new septic tank and driveway. Plus the medical bills. If there were big muddy footprints all around the front yard, they had been swept away before the doctors let me go home. Old, empty septic tanks collapse all the time, you know. It was another two seasons of mowing lawns for the little old ladies my mother knew from church before I actually got to go to school.
Rated R: For language, and other shit.
Cooks Source links: Copyright Follies (http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1553538.html)
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A note about the Cooks Source thing: Since I recorded the intro, Cooks Source issued something of an apology to Monica Gaudio, and has made a donation to the charity she requested in lieu of pay. I...actually can't find that apology anymore. But there are reactions to it from John Scalzi (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/11/09/cooks-source-apology/) and Nick Mamatas (http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1557472.html).
Now it seems that Cooks Source editor Judith Griggs has issued a second apology/rebuttal (http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1557472.html) of the whole thing, essentially suggesting Gaudio never gave her a chance and that her reaction has destroyed Cooks Source. I haven't actually seen anyone's response to this second statement.
ETA: I stand corrected - here is Ms. Gaudio's response (http://illadore.livejournal.com/32647.html) to the new "apology".
Anyway, I guess that's what happens when I record stuff "timely" things that won't go live for weeks. Still, thanks for listening, and hope you enjoyed the story!
Skatouioannis Skatouioannis Skatouioannis!!!!!!!!
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I enjoyed this story as long as I wasn't thinking about it too hard. But when I did, I started wondering - the toilet-digging-spirit started a cholera epidemic in Africa to stop the narrator from going there? Or was that a coincidence? Why was this one Greek kid so important to him?
The problem isn't exactly with this one plot point, so much as it's really hard for me to reconcile the different parts of the story into a coherent whole. It doesn't work as a metaphorical story for a 1st generation's immigrant's experiences because the method used to defeat the obstacle - sewage-eating nanotech - doesn't represent anything. It doesn't work as a story about a supernatural encounter in our world, since, even if we ignore the nanotech, none of the characters (esp. the girlfriends) acted the least bit believably. It does work as a fantasy alternate reality, but then it feels weird that it's set in Long Island, in a real immigrant community.
It did amuse me, and time went relatively fast in the gym as I was listening to it, but it's not a story that will stick with me in any way.
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Cute, funny story. I'm 12 on the inside, so I love a good poop joke.
Enjoyed the reading.
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Oh yeah, forgot to mention the reading, which was pretty cool, and worked a lot towards my enjoying the story.
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I really really enjoyed this one. Probably mostly because 1. I also really enjoy a good poop joke/story. I guess I'm also 12! ;D Mainly, though, I think it's because I am actually FROM where this story takes place. I grew up in the town between Port Jefferson and Stony Brook, 2 towns mentioned in the story. (I'll forgive the author for creating a new road map since he was correct about the Long Island Rail Road ;) ) There's a large Greek population in the area and a nice little Greek cafe right in downtown Port Jefferson Village. Not to mention the beautiful Greek Orthodox Church on Sheep Pasture Road...
The story itself was pretty much all that eytanz wrote. An enjoyable, amusing tale. It will stick with me, but I think that might be for wishful thinking about the poo-eating nanobots cleaning up the Sound!
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Man, PodCastle comedies have been on a real winning streak for me lately, and I have yet to hear a Nick Mamatas story I haven't liked. I really enjoyed this, and even though the nanotech was obviously going to be more than just window dressing, I was pleasantly surprised by how it figured in the ending.
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This one didn't really work for me at all. I didn't find it all that funny and never really got into it. I think I was slightly distracted while listening to some of it, but that may be because it pretty much failed to grab my attention and hold it for very long.
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Wait, THAT's what "Malacha" means?
>:(
Excuse me, I have some childhood acquaintances I need to hunt down and put to the sword...
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Eh... I didn't like this one much. Maybe I'm just in a grumpy mood, as I didn't like the other Podcastle story I listened to today (Chemical Magic). I guess the main character kind of annoyed me. He had this smug acceptance of his parents' Greckomania that I found kind of offputting... Maybe I'm just off identity stories right now and should go read some comforting stories about aliens. I dunno.
My final reaction was a resounding "meh." There were moments I loved, moments that made me squirm a little (in the bad way, not the good way), and a lot of moments that I'll probably forget in a week.
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I work with a few Greeks, though in Minnesota not New York. Even multiple generations after immigration they are much more family and tradition oriented than my family, the Norwegian on my mom's side or the German on my dad's side. On the Norwegian side the only pointers to tradition are: 1. my late Grandpa's love of Ole and Lena jokes. 2. ethnic foods like lutefisk and lefse. 3. The Lord's Prayer in needlework in Norwegian on my Grandma's kitchen wall. On the German side... I don't know of anything that really links to the heritage.
Anyway, the story was cute. Not bad, not among my favorites. I liked the Greek family perspective. I thought the haunting demon was interesting, though it would've been nice if there had been some reason why this particular fellow gets to be the butt of it.
The only real problem I had with it was that I didn't realize that Skatouioannis was a shit-demon until that became important to the story. I mean, I know he backed up the toilets at the parents' house, but I interpreted that as just one in a string of pranks and interferences of various types, and that they didn't all have to be poo-related. I didn't realize he was strictly fecal-focused until the nanos got him, and then it referred to him as a "shit demon", at which point I was caught by surprise--I figured they'd eat the poo off his clothes, but not actually him.
I've never heard of Skatouioannis, I'm guessing it's closely rooted with "scatalogical"? :)
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I didn't mind this story, though I didn't think it was all that funny. I laughed in a couple of places, though.
Dave, I think you may have done the story a disservice by building it up as hilarious in the intro. Humour is very subjective. It might have been better just to say that you found it hilarious (which I expect you meant to imply by saying it's funny, but some people will take it as you meaning it's intrinsically funny for everyone).
I liked that the author had a 'magic vs. technology' battle sorts and liked even more that the technology won.
Like eytanz and Listener, I liked the reading, though I felt that the completed recording could have used a going-through to remove all the mouth-smacking noises, which got distracting at times. (And yes, I do go through my own recordings and remove at least the worst of those noises.)
The only real problem I had with it was that I didn't realize that Skatouioannis was a shit-demon until that became important to the story.
I got it a little sooner than that. I was able to relate the English translation of his name - "Shitty John" [hah! just got the pun in the second name there] - to the poo-related 'pranks', which were, of course, not really pranks at all, but measures to keep George from leaving home.
What I didn't get was why Skatouioannis was doing all that crap. Did I miss a mention somewhere that the MC's parents had invoked him in order to keep their kid at home and 'safe' (perhaps accidentally, as a result of the childhood threats they dumped on him)? Or was Skatouioannis doing all that on his own recognisance, just to be an asshole*?
*(See what I did there? ;) )
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Skatouiannis was the threat that enforced the parents' less appealing instructions ("Eat your greens" etc.) I suspect that the parents' desire for their son to stay close to home and the old ways and not assimilate is really the unspoken driving force behind the haunting. The son doesn't want to, but the threat of the boogeyman keeps him in line.
(Skato - root for, indeed, scatological; Iannis = Janus/Johannus = John.)
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This one is very hard for me to rate: my attention kept drifting off, though i found the character likable, and parts of the story were cool, funny, gross and completely blank because my attention wandered. I think the narrator did a good job—that is to say, i think it was the story that kept losing my focus, rather than the reader.
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Yeah, I thought it was well written, and well read, but I think a lot of it just didn't appeal to me. I kept thinking that maybe if I was Greek I would get more enjoyment out of it.
I also kept thinking, "So...a Greek stereotype is basically what happens when an Italian stereotype and a Jewish stereotype have a baby?"
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Not so much a story as an action scene with a bit of scene-setting and an ending tagged on around it. I also forgot that it was supposed to have been funny until I came here to see what people thought of it. What was supposed to be the humorous bit, the fact that this was some poo-demon? I mean, I liked Dogma too, but come on.
So I'm not dumping on it for not being funny, just for not really being any good. Perhaps as a longer story with more fibre it might have passed easier for me.
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Dave, I think you may have done the story a disservice by building it up as hilarious in the intro. Humour is very subjective. It might have been better just to say that you found it hilarious (which I expect you meant to imply by saying it's funny, but some people will take it as you meaning it's intrinsically funny for everyone).
That's a fair point. I know a writer who submitted a story to particular magazine, referring to it in the cover letter as a "humorous story". The editor liked it, but didn't think it was funny, and rejected it saying "if you hadn't said it was funny I would have been more likely to take it."
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Skatouiannis was the threat that enforced the parents' less appealing instructions ("Eat your greens" etc.) I suspect that the parents' desire for their son to stay close to home and the old ways and not assimilate is really the unspoken driving force behind the haunting. The son doesn't want to, but the threat of the boogeyman keeps him in line.
(Skato - root for, indeed, scatological; Iannis = Janus/Johannus = John.)
Sure, but why that family and no other family? I've heard stereotypes about Greek families like that, so I suspect it must be fairly common, why is this the only one with an infernal fecal fiend?
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Skatouiannis was the threat that enforced the parents' less appealing instructions ("Eat your greens" etc.) I suspect that the parents' desire for their son to stay close to home and the old ways and not assimilate is really the unspoken driving force behind the haunting. The son doesn't want to, but the threat of the boogeyman keeps him in line.
(Skato - root for, indeed, scatological; Iannis = Janus/Johannus = John.)
Sure, but why that family and no other family? I've heard stereotypes about Greek families like that, so I suspect it must be fairly common, why is this the only one with an infernal fecal fiend?
Who says they are?
Skatouioannis in particular is based on a sewage man of the same name from the protagonist's father's "tiny village," so I presume the reason he personally isn't involved elsewhere is because no one else from that village made it to America and told their kids about him.
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So I'm not dumping on it for not being funny, just for not really being any good. Perhaps as a longer story with more fibre it might have passed easier for me.
*snicker*
I see what you did there.
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Dave, I think you may have done the story a disservice by building it up as hilarious in the intro. Humour is very subjective. It might have been better just to say that you found it hilarious (which I expect you meant to imply by saying it's funny, but some people will take it as you meaning it's intrinsically funny for everyone).
Wait, you guys take me seriously now? After I broke up with you last week? Some people never learn...
But regarding a "disservice": I don't know. Maybe? I mean, I just recorded an intro for an upcoming story that I thought was badass, and so I called it badass. If we've got something I think is charming, I'll call it charming. I thought this story was pretty funny, so I called it hilarious. (Okay, I think I actually said "totally hilarious." Maybe it wasn't "totally," but I did think it was pretty hilarious.) But really - I think I only referred to it as funny once in the intro...now the badass thing a few weeks from now - okay, maybe I went overboard.
I mean, it's cool that other people didn't find it funny - and I agree that humor is a very subjective thing - but this story cracked me up. I must've listened to David's narration of it three times. Flipping off the shit demon, calling him a malaka, knocking him into the Sound where nano-technology makes brown froth out of him and his donkey? Okay, yeah, I'm a sick puppy. But I laughed. A lot.
Liberals. Sheesh.
I know a writer who submitted a story to particular magazine, referring to it in the cover letter as a "humorous story". The editor liked it, but didn't think it was funny, and rejected it saying "if you hadn't said it was funny I would have been more likely to take it."
We're kind of getting off topic here, butL Really? I mean, I'm not questioning that happened, but that seems nuts to me.
If I read a story that was trying to be funny but didn't think it actually was, I'd reject it because I didn't think it was funny. I definitely wouldn't reject it because someone's cover letter suggested it was funny. (That said - it's probably sound advice not to describe stories in cover letters. I just can't imagine rejecting someone's story based on a disagreement I have with their description of it in their cover letter.)
ETA: Damned typo.
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If you'd reject a story that was trying to be funny and wasn't, then wouldn't the author describing it as "funny" in the cover letter indicate that he/she was trying to be funny and (presuming the story wasn't funny) failed?
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Possibly. But I'd reject it because the story itself failed at being funny, not because the author told me it was supposed to be funny in the cover letter. Does that make sense?
Frex: I wouldn't say, "If you hadn't said this was a funny story, I might have liked it more." Some editors might, but yeesh. The cover letter would have to say something horrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible for me to make a comment about something in it.
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We're kind of getting off topic here, butL Really? I mean, I'm not questioning that happened, but that seems nuts to me.
If I read a story that was trying to be funny but didn't think it actually was, I'd reject it because I didn't think it was funny. I definitely wouldn't reject it because someone's cover letter suggested it was funny. (That said - it's probably sound advice not to describe stories in cover letters. I just can't imagine rejecting someone's story based on a disagreement I have with their description of it in their cover letter.)
I agree, but it actually happened so I guess at least person doesn't agree. Me, I'd probably be one of the sort who doesn't read a cover letter until after reading the story--the story's gotta stand on it's own, right? So the cover letter seems unimportant until you at least decide the story was good enough to finish reading--then maybe that'll be the tiebreaker between two stories you liked similarly.
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I went to Stony Brook for two and a half years before dropping out, so I was very stoked to see all the mentions of Long Island towns and haunts I'd been to. I spent most of the story in a sort of nostalgic haze and came out of it determined to post a comment for a change. Reading through the comments though, the haze faded. I still have an overall positive impression of this story, but if I were asked to tell someone about it a few months from now I'd be at a loss. Too many things pasted together, and the plot didn't add up with regards to the motivation of the characters. So I know this sounds like I'm being mean and I'm sorry. Just wanted to say that I was a Long Islander for a bit and loved the mentions, but only liked the story.
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I loved this one. "Shitty John" is now one of my favorite characters. LOL :D
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I just recorded an intro for an upcoming story that I thought was badass, and so I called it badass. ... I thought this story was pretty funny, so I called it hilarious. (Okay, I think I actually said "totally hilarious." Maybe it wasn't "totally," but I did think it was pretty hilarious.) But really - I think I only referred to it as funny once in the intro...now the badass thing a few weeks from now - okay, maybe I went overboard.
Perhaps going overboard would be the answer. Repeatedly saying it was totally hilarious may have, through the use of irony, ended up with the effect that we know it's your reaction to the story, rather than the reaction you hope (or expect) to elicit from us.
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I was struck with a thought I have had in various forms a number of times; but did not think of posting it and then my name appeared in the Squonk feedback and I kinda feel obliged
This week I walked up to two colleagues talking about identity
One was Zulu and spoke of a pure bloodline with no European or other ancestry; the other a Coloured with family from the Western Cape, a historic creole culture from the 1600's and onward. The conversation got onto notions of tribalism, culture, identity and the claims they bring to land rights, ownership and notions of who can be seen, who can call themselves African. In South Africa our debates of race, culture, and identity are rich and diverse.
But our default is plurality; none would claim there is only one culture; we have no welcome to South Africa as if its a singular. The story reminded me of a common feeling I get from America and the students and academics I encounter; that there is a simple choice between the modern and the traditional, between the American and the not. How strange it would be to live in a place where the choice is so binary; so possible to make.
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What a sweet, craptacular story.
I just recently got back in touch, thanks to Facebook, with a friend I went to college with 20 years ago. He's looking for work, still lives in the suburb where he grew up in, still single, and yes, he's Greek. I told him he should move up to where I live, and he said, nawww. He likes where he is.
Hmmmm...if I didn't know any better...
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I just recently got back in touch, thanks to Facebook, with a friend I went to college with 20 years ago. He's looking for work, still lives in the suburb where he grew up in, still single, and yes, he's Greek. I told him he should move up to where I live, and he said, nawww. He likes where he is.
Hmmmm...if I didn't know any better...
You should at least send him this story. :)
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The story itself was pretty much all that eytanz wrote. An enjoyable, amusing tale. It will stick with me, but I think that might be for wishful thinking about the poo-eating nanobots cleaning up the Sound!
sorry for bumping an old thread, but this story DID sick with me, and in the local paper today, I came across a story in the local paper about a Professor at Stony Brook University who received a $50k grant...
From the article:
"Stony Brook will use the grant to focus on an invention by Perena Gouma, a professor in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering, and graduate student Jusang Lee called nanogrids, which the university described as “miniaturized self-supported mats, similar to fishing nets” that float on water and use solar energy to rapidly decompose crude oil and other pollutants."
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/long-island-now-1.1732330/stony-brook-gets-50g-research-grant-1.3234885 (http://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/long-island-now-1.1732330/stony-brook-gets-50g-research-grant-1.3234885)
:o